Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act--
Floor Speech
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Ms. WARREN. Thank you, Mr. President.
I have come to the floor of the Senate five times over the past week to talk about how the bank lobbyist act puts American families in danger of getting punched in the gut in another financial crisis. I have talked about how it rolls back consumer protections and how, if it passes, 25 of the 40 largest banks in this country--banks that sucked down, collectively, almost $50 billion in bailout money during the crisis, and nobody went to jail--can be regulated like tiny, little community banks.
I talked about how the bill will roll back the rules on the very biggest banks in this country--JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and the rest of them--banks that broke our economy in 2008, banks where no one went to jail, banks where taxpayers coughed up $180 billion to bail them out. I talked about how Washington is poised to make the same mistake it has made many times before deregulating giant banks while the economy is cruising, only to set the stage for another financial crisis.
Now, I am not the only one who has talked about problems with this bill. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the FDIC, the Congressional Budget Office, the NAACP, the Urban League have all talked about parts of this bill that cause problems and would cause problems in our economy.
Today, I want to talk about another part of the bill that keeps me awake at night--the part that guts our ability to find and go after mortgage discrimination by exempting 85 percent of banks from reporting data about the loans they make under a law called the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act or HMDA.
There is a long and shameful history in this country of discriminating against communities of color when they try to buy homes. From 1934 to 1968, the Federal Housing Administration led the charge, actively discriminating by refusing to insure loans to qualified buyers while helping White families finance their plans to achieve the American dream. This policy was not a secret. Nope. It was not the product of a handful of racist government officials. Nope. It was the official policy of the U.S. Government until 1968--in my lifetime and the lifetime of 90 Senators who serve today. The official policy of this government was to help White people buy homes and to deny that help to Black people. Because the Federal Government had set this standard, private lenders enthusiastically followed Washington's lead.
Homes are the way that millions of working families built some economic security. They pay down a mortgage and own an asset that over time often appreciates. A home serves as security to fund other ventures--to start a small business or to send a youngster to college. If Grandma and Grandpa could hang on to the home and get it paid off, they can often pass along an asset that boosts the finances of the next generation and the one after that.
That is exactly what White people have done for generations--but not Black people. Systematically, over many decades, government policies that encouraged mortgage companies to lend only to White borrowers cut the legs out from under minority families trying to build some family wealth, and the result has been exactly what you would predict. It has contributed to a staggering gap of wealth between White communities and communities of color today. One statistic from Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe, states that the median net worth of White families living in Boston is $247,500, and the median net worth for a Black family is $8. That is something all Americans, regardless of race, should be ashamed of.
When I was traveling around the country in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it became clear to me that the crash had made the problem worse. Subprime lenders that had peddled mortgages full of tricks and traps had specifically targeted minority borrowers. That meant that during the great recession, a huge number of minority borrowers lost their homes. When rising home prices helped White Americans regain some financial security, communities of color, with their lower homeownership rates and their higher foreclosure rates, were often left behind.
Again, this is just one example. According to Pew, between 2010 and 2013, the median wealth of White households grew by 2.4 percent, but the wealth of Hispanic households in that same time fell by 14.3 percent, and the wealth of African-American households fell by 33.7 percent.
Mortgage discrimination didn't end in the 1960s when formal redlining policies were abolished. It didn't end with the tightening of mortgage rules following the financial crisis. Lending discrimination is still alive and well in America in 2018.
According to a new report that just came out from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Reveal, in 2015 and 2016, nearly two-thirds of mortgage lenders denied loans for people of color at higher rates than for White people. This problem affects both big and small lenders, and it is nationwide. Minority borrowers were more likely to be denied a mortgage than White borrowers with the same income in 61 different cities across America.
How do we know that? Because of HMDA data. That is how we can see how much Black families were charged for a mortgage or how often Latino families were denied a chance to take out a mortgage--and we can compare those numbers with White borrowers who have the same income and same credit scores, but we can't do that if the data is missing. It is impossible to detect and fight mortgage discrimination without HMDA data.
The banking bill on the floor of the Senate says that 85 percent of the banks will no longer be required to report HMDA data, including the borrower's credit score and age; the loan's points, fees, and interest rates, and the property value. Eighty-five percent. This data is essential to figuring out whether the borrower got a fair deal.
If this bill passes, there will be entire communities where there will not be enough data to figure out whether borrowers are getting ripped off, entire communities where it will be impossible to monitor whether people are getting cheated because of their race or gender, entire communities where Federal and State regulators will not be able to bring cases, and independent groups like Reveal will not be able to hold these groups accountable.
Sure, banks will save a little money by not having to fill out the HMDA data, but when communities of color are once again left behind, there will be no way to prove it. That is why civil rights groups around the country have spoken up against this bill. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said ``[e]xempting the overwhelming majority of our Nation's banks and credit unions from an expanded HMDA requirement that would better enable Federal regulators, State attorneys general, fair housing advocates, and others to identify and address discriminatory and predatory mortgage practices is unwise.''
The Urban League and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition wrote in a newspaper column that the bill ``would be a giant step backwards for the public and national groups who use this data to ensure banks treat all borrowers equally.'' According to the NAACP, the bill ``would devastate our attempts to determine--and potentially rectify--racially discriminatory lending or loan approval patterns at play.''
This is about basic fairness. HMDA data is an investment we should be making to make sure that all qualified Americans have the same chance to buy a home. Throughout our history, Washington has always fallen short of that goal. Gutting HMDA allows our country and our government to ignore discrimination, letting history repeat itself.
Communities of color will pay the price if this Congress makes this same mistake again. It isn't too late. We can stop this bill from becoming law.
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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise today to join the citizens of Massachusetts who are making their voices heard and sending a clear message to President Trump: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts stands strong in opposition to his reckless proposal to expand offshore drilling. We stand strong in opposition to yet another handout to Big Oil executives who are willing to put corporate profits ahead of the health of our coastal families. We stand strong in opposition to this administration's willful ignorance of climate change and the world's ongoing clean energy revolution.
President Trump may say that his drilling plan is about growing jobs, but the truth is that this offshore drilling proposal is a slap in the face to every hard-working coastal family. President Trump is willing to put corporate profits for his Big Oil buddies ahead of shipping crews in Boston, ahead of the fishermen from Gloucester to New Bedford, ahead of the mom-and-pop diners all along the Cape, ahead of every tourism industry worker, and ahead of the families of all of these workers. President Trump is willing to gamble with the livelihoods of over 600,000 North Atlantic coastal and ocean workers. The people of Massachusetts and the people who depend on a clean coast are not willing to take that gamble.
Our coastal communities remember when the BP Deepwater Horizon oilspill happened in 2010. One offshore oil well blew and caused Deepwater Horizon's drilling rig to explode. It killed 11 workers, injured 17 others, and unleashed one of the worst environmental disasters in human history. Nearly 5 million barrels of oil gushed into the ocean, contaminating more than 1,300 miles of coastline and nearly 70,000 square miles of surface water. Millions of birds and marine animals died, suffocated by thick coatings of oil and poisoned by other toxic chemicals. The gulf fishing industry lost thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. The spill devastated the gulf's coastal tourism economy. The environmental and economic devastation hit working families and small businesses across the region.
But the Trump administration insists on padding the pockets of Big Oil while small coastal towns bear all the risks that something will go wrong. The local towns bear the risk of a devastating oilspill. The local towns bear the risk of climate change impact, including increased coastal habitat destruction, fisheries threatened by ocean acidification, and rising sea levels. President Trump and this Republican Congress want to bury their heads in the sand or bury their heads in the big pile of Big Oil money, but the reality is this: Climate change has happened, and the evidence is all around us. The consequences are worsening with every single day of inaction.
Make no mistake. We are in the most critical fight of our generation and we are running out of time. We are in a fight to save our coastal towns, a fight to save our farmers, a fight to save our fishermen, a fight to save good-paying clean energy jobs, and a fight for our children's future.
Will winning the fight against climate change be tough? You bet it will. We will need to retool to install offshore wind turbines instead of offshore drilling rigs. We will need to invest in faster clean energy deployment, modernize the electric grid, build sea walls to protect our coastal towns, and much, much more. It is a big job ahead, but there is no country and no workforce in the world that is more willing and more able to tackle the challenges of climate change head- on than the United States of America. Yes, it is hard, but it is what we do. It is who we are.
We are a nation of unrelenting workers who clawed our way out of the Great Depression, who fought two world wars, who put a man on the moon, and who electrified the Nation with 20th century fuels. With a level playing field, we are a nation of workers who can electrify the world all over again with the 21st century fuels of wind, solar, and other clean energy sources.
The American people deserve leadership that understands just how innovative and persistent we are--leadership that knows the fearless strength of the American people; leadership that believes in the innovative, get-it-done attitude of the American worker; leadership that will stand up to Big Oil executives hell-bent on protecting their profits at our expense; and leadership that knows that our best days are ahead of us. But we have to fight for them. They deserve leadership that will not ignore the challenges of climate change; leadership that will not chain our economy to the fossil fuels of yesterday and, instead, will support the good-paying, clean energy jobs of tomorrow; and leadership that refuses to put our coastal families at risk of another devastating oil spill.
The American people deserve leadership that doesn't work for Big Oil. The American people deserve leadership that works for them.
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